John has asked me to select the theme for January's TOTM. In keeping with previous months, I've chosen something to appeal to both Northumberland pipers and Border pipers (though I'm aware that this trend effectively excludes most tunes that came into the smallpipe repertoire after 1810! - future selectors may wish to bear this in mind)

The theme I've chosen is Highland Laddie. There are at least two strands here, Highland Laddie and New Highland Laddie, so there's plenty of scope for contributions. Examples I can think of include the GHB quickstep Highland Laddie, The Bonny Lass of Livingston, Dixon's Highland Laddie, and Peacock & Clough Family settings of New Highland Laddie.

Be careful though; New Highland Laddie was the last tune played by 'Old' Thomas Clough (II) before his death, and Tom (III) once remarked that Henry Clough played it beautifully one evening, and the next day he was dead! The superstitious amongst you will be relieved to know that the last tune played by 'Young' Tom (IV) was not Highland Laddie, but Nae Guid Luck!

New Highland Laddie is a grand tune.I wonder what Tom made of it in performance - it has things in common with Holey Ha'penny,which has twice as many dots in Tom's recording as when he wrote it down. There's scope for an imaginative reconstruction there.

Kate Dalrymple makes the structure of New Highland Laddie a bit more obvious - it has a short strain repeated, then a long one unrepeated.About half the strains of NHL, including the first, are a short strain, repeated, only with a different end tag, and the other half including the 2nd, have an extended tag where the repeat should be.But they don't alternate strictly, so presumably at least one strain has got lost, or been inserted. One for the musicologists....

The missing short strain was there all the time in Peacock - his 5th.It is also in Clough, just - the one that appears in one Clough MS between 2 and 3 of the version in the Clough book, see p 107.Peacock's version alternates short and long strains nicely - but why the repeat marks on the long strains?I may get to understand this tune before the month is out....

Not entirely happy with my playing, as I hadn't played the tune before last weekend. I stumble in a couple of places and still need to work on my right hand as it's not as precise as I'd like it to be, so I'd appreciate hearing how others approach it. I'll work on it further and may post a second attempt later in the month - if it's any better!